I know I have been quite critical of the Jim Dale audiobooks of the Harry Potter novels. It is usually much easier (and more popular) to find fault in things than it is to praise them and I all too often fall victim to the lure of being critical.
I am now in the middle of book five -- The Order of the Phoenix -- and, despite the faults with Dale's delivery that I have documented in earlier posts to this blog, I am thoroughly enjoying the experience. He is, overall, an excellent reader and brings the stories to vivid life for me.
During the course of listening to the first four and a half books, I have laughed out loud often and gasped in surprise several times. I have been so enthralled that I have been unable to shut off the CD player, even when I was supposed to be starting my work day and I have found myself taking every opportunity to get back to the story throughout the day.
I find it something of a miracle that, in the two months I have possessed this 124-disc collection, comprising about 153 hours of reading, I have already managed to listen to more than 80 of the discs (representing more than 100 hours). That's just amazing!
One of my favourite aspects of Jim Dale's reading, believe it or not, is the way he vocalises Dobby saying the name "Harry Potter". I cannot even begin to describe it but I think it is absolutely perfect. It makes me smile every time it comes up.
Another aspect of the audiobooks that I particularly like has nothing to do with the recordings themselves -- it's the artwork that decorates the CD cartons. I have not yet been able to discover who the artist or artists is/are but the little drawings are fantastic. They are wonderful visual representations of the characters from the stories that, in my opinion, capture the essence of the Potter books much better than do the films.
I'm not sure if I am allowed to reproduce them for you on this blog but I will try to find them somewhere online for you. They really are pretty wonderful.
Showing posts with label audio books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label audio books. Show all posts
Saturday, May 16, 2015
Friday, March 20, 2015
Dale, Frye and the American idiom
As part of my recent birthday extravaganza, I received as a gift a complete set of the audio books of the Harry Potter novels. This is something I have coveted for some time so I was completely thrilled to open the box and find them all smiling up at me.
100 compacts discs. More than 117 hours worth of recordings. All seven of J.K. Rowling's novels, unabridged, recorded specially by Jim Dale. Since I already own The Deathly Hallows in this format, I am well acquainted with Mr. Dale and his vocal stylings and I am very much looking forward to listening to the books, in order, at times when I can really focus.
Two things of interest have emerged immediately upon my opening this gift.
First, my partner described to me the adventure she went on in trying to decide which of the two sets of recordings that have been made of these books (the Jim Dale version or the Stephen Frye version) she should purchase for me and then, once the decision had been made, to purchase them.
I learned a great deal from her story. My partner said she had gone online and listened to sections from each version and had decided, based on her comparison, that she preferred the Frye version. So that's the one she attempted to buy.
It was only then that she learnt that the Dale version is for North American (read, "American") audiences and that the Frye version was made for sale in the United Kingdom but not here. So she decided to wait until we travelled to England for my birthday, determined to acquire it then. Before we left, however, she found out that the Frye version is no longer available, not even in England, for reasons no one has been able to explain to her. She was told that she might be lucky enough to find one in an out-of-the-way bookstore somewhere in Britain but it was unlikely.
So she ordered the Dale version before she left, in case she could not find the Frye version on our trip, then used any opportunity while we were in England to see if she could find Frye's collection. No luck. Not even at the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio Tour. The Frye collection of CDs is simply not available, at least not new, and she didn't have the time nor the resources to try to track down a used set.
The result is that the Dale version is still available for sale in North America but the Frye version does not appear to be available anywhere. Strange.
Second, when I started to listen to the first book on CD, I noticed something else I had never known before.
Because it was made for the American audience, the story is called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the title used in the US, and not Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, as was used in the UK and Canada.
That much was not a surprise to me. I was well aware that the American version of the first book had a different name (because, according to legend, the US Publishers at Scholastic Books had such a low opinion of the American child that they thought the US kids would not want to read a book about some boring old philosopher and his stone... a sorcerer, however: whiz bang, let me at it!).
What has surprised me, however, is the fact that they didn't stop at changing the title. All through the book, the American publishers replaced British word usages with American ones.
Here are some examples from the first three chapters:
"sellotape" becomes "scotch tape";
"cine-camera" becomes "video camera";
"fringe" (of hair) becomes "bangs"; and
"local comprehensive school" becomes "local public school".
It's quite disconcerting and a little bit ridiculous, in my mind. Especially when you have Jim Dale reading the book to you in a set of thoroughly British accents, using American idioms throughout.
Kind of makes you wonder what would have happened if the bright minds at Scholastic had been the first to publish Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, Austen or Woolf in the United States...
100 compacts discs. More than 117 hours worth of recordings. All seven of J.K. Rowling's novels, unabridged, recorded specially by Jim Dale. Since I already own The Deathly Hallows in this format, I am well acquainted with Mr. Dale and his vocal stylings and I am very much looking forward to listening to the books, in order, at times when I can really focus.
Two things of interest have emerged immediately upon my opening this gift.
First, my partner described to me the adventure she went on in trying to decide which of the two sets of recordings that have been made of these books (the Jim Dale version or the Stephen Frye version) she should purchase for me and then, once the decision had been made, to purchase them.
I learned a great deal from her story. My partner said she had gone online and listened to sections from each version and had decided, based on her comparison, that she preferred the Frye version. So that's the one she attempted to buy.
It was only then that she learnt that the Dale version is for North American (read, "American") audiences and that the Frye version was made for sale in the United Kingdom but not here. So she decided to wait until we travelled to England for my birthday, determined to acquire it then. Before we left, however, she found out that the Frye version is no longer available, not even in England, for reasons no one has been able to explain to her. She was told that she might be lucky enough to find one in an out-of-the-way bookstore somewhere in Britain but it was unlikely.
So she ordered the Dale version before she left, in case she could not find the Frye version on our trip, then used any opportunity while we were in England to see if she could find Frye's collection. No luck. Not even at the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio Tour. The Frye collection of CDs is simply not available, at least not new, and she didn't have the time nor the resources to try to track down a used set.
The result is that the Dale version is still available for sale in North America but the Frye version does not appear to be available anywhere. Strange.
Second, when I started to listen to the first book on CD, I noticed something else I had never known before.
Because it was made for the American audience, the story is called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the title used in the US, and not Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, as was used in the UK and Canada.
That much was not a surprise to me. I was well aware that the American version of the first book had a different name (because, according to legend, the US Publishers at Scholastic Books had such a low opinion of the American child that they thought the US kids would not want to read a book about some boring old philosopher and his stone... a sorcerer, however: whiz bang, let me at it!).
What has surprised me, however, is the fact that they didn't stop at changing the title. All through the book, the American publishers replaced British word usages with American ones.
Here are some examples from the first three chapters:
"sellotape" becomes "scotch tape";
"cine-camera" becomes "video camera";
"fringe" (of hair) becomes "bangs"; and
"local comprehensive school" becomes "local public school".
It's quite disconcerting and a little bit ridiculous, in my mind. Especially when you have Jim Dale reading the book to you in a set of thoroughly British accents, using American idioms throughout.
Kind of makes you wonder what would have happened if the bright minds at Scholastic had been the first to publish Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, Austen or Woolf in the United States...
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